Kit Bag

I was a little surprised to get an email a few days ago with the following: “You’re receiving this email because you signed up for the Google Authorship programme. This is a one-off notification and we will not be contacting you further about this issue. You’ve established your Authorship, which means that your photo and a link to your profile can now appear next to your content in search results. Learn more”. I didn’t recall applying for Google Authorship. But now it’s here I’m glad I’ve got it. The reflector holder attached to the back of my camera bag says ‘Mark Emery Photography – Google for “MARKSE”‘. Now people have an extra verification that the pages they’re about to view are mine.

This post is for all of the kids, parents and adults that have seen me out with Ben Bo while doing my Google Business Photos work, noted the ‘Google “MARKSE”‘ on the reflector bag and are now here. He’s getting a LOT of smiles! And causing a number of conversations to start.

Today Ben was confirmed to be a monkey, not a dog, by a young Ben 10 fan sat on the Hammersmith & City line with his mother. (read the rest of the post…)

As followers of my blog will know I’d got DAZ3D to use the virtual figures and show examples of poses I’m looking for in shoots. I recently commented on an image by Dreamlight in one of the DAZ3D groups in Facebook, the lighting really was superb, bring the image close to the point where the viewer asks “is it real or rendered?” A few days later and I get an email thanking me for my support of the artist. It offered early exclusive access to content from a new Learning Portal that will be based on Dreamlight’s work.

I accepted the offer and I must say I’m really glad I did. It’s reopened my eyes to light in a way that other more traditional training videos on studio photography didn’t. And with DAZ3D being free it doesn’t cost a fortune to set up a virtual studio and try all the light effects you want. Of course the challenge will then be to turn the virtual into the physical for the shoot with a real model.

I’ve recently updated the iPhone from iOS 5 to 6.0.1 having waited oh so patiently for a native Google Maps to appear. There are a few nice features in the update, but one I recommend all photographers in my position make full use of. Having a very busy email inbox with constant stream of casting calls, forum and product updates from multiple vendors, the VIP feature has been brilliant for making me quickly aware of emails from people that I’m waiting to hear from.

And it’s nice when it’s good news, like the message on the left! Not that the accountant confirming receipt of VAT return data is bad news, but I’m sure you know what I mean People I’m doing shoots or edits for are now being marked as the VIPs they are so I can get back to them sooner, not have their email become the proverbial needle in a haystack.

Thanks to the Casting feature on Purple Port I had three models respond to my Oswin themed shoot idea. They didn’t all respond at once and one moving to a University campus and not responding to emails for a while resulted in my saying yes to a second. I may shoot this twice as I’m finding it hard to say no to one of them. Or have them both along to the same shoot and also do a “No, I’m Oswin!” shot

The original shot idea has an Oswin lookalike holding herself up on the tops of two Dalek. The final Dalek graphics I hope to get from Stu of CutnPasteGraphics.

For the shoot dummy heads will be used so the pose shown can be shot, “Oswin” looking skyward for “Rescue me chin boy, and show me the stars”. To enable everyone to get a better idea of what I’m aiming for I used a virtual model in DAZ3D, bought a dress for her and experimented with limb positions.

If there are any Dalek builders out there reading this I’d love some help making a top the right shape so the models hands rest in the right place.

Sometimes launching a service well after others makes it hard to get a share of the market. However if you’ve got the right resources it can be a good strategy as it allows you to fully understand what the market is after and step in with a better product. Strobox and Sylight being a good example. Here’s another…

Last night I discovered an app by Olivier Lance, Pierre-Jean Quilleré and Mathieu Jouhet called Sylights. It enables lighting setups to be drawn on an iPhone or iPad. As the sylights.com title says it’s “Lighting Diagrams made easy”.

Users of Strobox will be familiar with this sort of tool and be interested for a number of reasons..

I’d just finished taking some head shots in the studio and was heading to the car when I spotted this lady with her partner, CALL MY AGENT splashed across her sweat top dress. I love fashion and this simple top with its message printed so big across the front made me laugh inside, smile and think “So who is your agent?”.

Loaded up with gear it took me a moment to catch up with the couple. After a bit of conferring in a language I didn’t understand I got a yes.(read the rest of the post…)

If like me you’re running Lightroom on a Windows laptop quite often you might find where your images are located an issue. I have my RAID server image archive mapped to P: on the laptop. I’ll move folders in the Lightroom catalogue that I’m no longer working on to the server and off the local hard drive. Now and then I find myself wanting to edit some of those images. (read the rest of the post…)